


Like Holding Broken Glass

by Avalynne



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: A New Dawn - John Jackson Miller, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Angst, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Family Feels, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, IN SPACE!, Space family, Vignette
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-02-12 20:31:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12967842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avalynne/pseuds/Avalynne
Summary: They might not have much, but they always have each other. A collection of hurt/comfort vignettes for the Rebels. ♡





	1. Distant Dark Places

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter One takes place shortly after Star Wars: A New Dawn.

Though she’d spent months dreaming of the kind of crew she’d fill the Ghost with, Hera Syndulla realized quite quickly that she hadn’t quite anticipated what having an actual person living on the ship with her would feel like.

On one hand, she couldn’t deny how handy it was to not be alone anymore. Her workload was halved as Kanan Jarrus made it abundantly clear that he would pull his own weight around the ship, and she was starting to notice all sorts of little things happening that had been on her to-do list for ages--fixing the caf machine so that it didn’t overfill every cup except for the extra-large teal one, organizing her ration bars by fastest-approaching expiration date, oil on one of the chairs that constantly squeaked. Those were just the things that she hadn’t mentioned--anytime she needed a hand fixing something, he was there, and half the time when she hadn’t asked for help, he was still there anyway.

On the other hand, she no longer had the privacy to walk around the ship in her pajamas, but even that didn’t seem like too bad of a trade-off for having someone else to help her haul cargo.

And there was the way he’d looked at her ship. She hadn’t wanted to admit it, but that pure look of adoration had sold her on taking him on as a crewmate--anyone who looked at her ship like that was good in her book.

The longer she spent on the ship with Kanan Jarrus, though, the more she realized that the carefully-constructed persona she’d seen on Gorse--the swaggering, cocky and frequently intoxicated scoundrel--was more facade than anything else. Sure, there were elements of that she still saw--the flirtatious side of him in particular, though he’d backed off quite a bit after a few well-placed glares--but for the most part, she was starting to realize there was far more to Kanan than she’d originally thought.

She’d expected to have to lecture him on keeping her ship neat, but he was more organized than she was by a long shot, practically militaristic in keeping any area he came into contact with orderly. She’d worried about him bringing all sorts of strange people onto the Ghost that would cause her to have to worry about certain Imperial entanglements, but he mostly kept to himself or chose to stick with her when they went on jobs together.

The Ghost had shifted to night cycle hours ago and still had hours to go, but for some reason that night, Hera couldn’t sleep. They wouldn’t be out of hyperspace until a few hours into the day cycle--flying on fuel efficiency tended to do that, but they wouldn’t get paid until they delivered their current cargo run--and there was nothing for her to worry about, but still, sleep kept eluding her. There was no point in changing into her normal flight suit--it wasn’t like anyone else would be awake this hour (and by anyone else, she just meant Kanan, since obviously Chopper didn’t care what she wore). She grabbed a sweatshirt and pulled it on over her sleep shirt and shorts and headed for the kitchen, wondering if maybe a drink of something not-caf (maybe the tea that Kanan kept stocking the kitchen with--he swore by the stuff, even if it did smell funny) would help put her back to sleep.

She paused as she passed by Kanan’s door--partially because she could have sworn she heard a noise, and partially because Chopper was lurking outside of his door in the middle of the night cycle, which would have been suspicious in even the best of situations.

Maybe she was sleeping, and this was all some weird dream.

“Chop?” she whispered, and the droid turned to face her--his acknowledgement of listening. “What are you doing?” 

Chopper rolled silently off towards the kitchen, and she followed, almost more bothered by that. Chopper didn’t do anything quietly, and typically went out of his way to be as noisy as absolutely possible when doing any task she set him to. Once the door to the kitchen whssked closed behind them (it had never sounded that smooth before--Kanan must have been at it), Chopper immediately launched into a tirade of beeps and blips laced with enough profanity that Hera was once again glad that her father wasn’t around to hear her droid. 

“You think Kanan’s dead,” she said bluntly, finally picking up the gist of it, and Chopper beeped a happily little affirmative. “You heard him make a noise, and now you’re certain he’s dead.”

Ignoring the droid’s chipper waving of arms, she went back into the hallway, determined to get to the bottom of what she was hoping wasn’t the sounds of Kanan bleeding out if her droid had actually murdered him. She was pretty certain that wasn’t the case, but…

Well, mostly certain.

Sort of certain, kind of.

“Kanan?” she asked quietly, tapping lightly on his door with her knuckles and feeling out of place on her own ship. They’d both been so good about respecting each others’ boundaries that she didn’t want to enter unasked for, but at the same time, if something was wrong--

There was no response but for some noise she couldn’t make quite make out, though it sounded painful.

They’d been in hyperspace long enough that he wasn’t hungover--she had a strict no-drinking policy on her ship that had been enacted when he’d come on, and he’d respected her wishes enough to do that--so either he had come down with some extreme illness, or Chopper really had tried killing her crewmate.

She wouldn’t know unless she went in, so she pressed the button that would open the door and hoped for the best.

“Kanan?” she asked, her heart racing as the door opened to reveal Kanan twisting and writhing, trapped in the light blanket on the bed. She’d known for a fact this was atypical behavior for him--he’d fallen asleep at the dining room table once and had been so still she hadn’t noticed him at first. “Kanan,” she repeated, and against her better judgement, she reached out and clasped her hand around his arm, shaking him.

She gave a little gasp as he tumbled out of his bunk and into a perfect fighting form that she hadn’t seen since her childhood--since the Jedi had been on Ryloth. All that was missing was the lightsaber.

“Kanan,” she snapped, a little louder this time, and he shook his head, finally opening his eyes in the dim light from the hallway. 

It took him a second to respond as he slowly rubbed his eyes, looking to her. 

She’d never admit it to him, but she loved his eyes--a bright, turquoise color not unlike her favorite mug that she took her morning caf out of that seemed to brighten when he was looking at the Ghost, talking to her, or fixing his blaster. Today, though, his eyes looked haunted, hollowed, dull and dead.

Part of her knew that it would be easier for both of them it she just walked out and pretended like she hadn’t seen…whatever this was. If she kept things the way they’d been working for the last two weeks--she was his boss, he worked as crew on the ship, and all that passed between them was amicable camaraderie.

The other part of her couldn’t stand to leave now, so she took a deep breath, steeled herself, and stepped closer to him, trying to focus on keeping her composure instead of how his hair looked out of its messy ponytail, and how she wondered what it would feel like if she reached out and put her hands in it--

“You okay?” she asked, twisting her hands together to keep herself from reaching out for him. She’d never seen him so rattled.

“Yeah,” he said, but his voice was hoarse and she didn’t quite believe him. She kept waiting for him to make some sort of quip about how she was in his room in the middle of the night, but he didn’t, and that’s when she knew that he really was shaken.

“Were you having a nightmare?” she asked, wanting to kick herself. Of course he was. It was a stupid question, but she had no experience with getting people to talk about things--her only other crewmate up until this point was just an angry droid that made plenty of noise without her having to prompt him. 

“I think?” he lifted an eyebrow, smiling tiredly. “Not entirely sure I’m awake now,” he laughed hollowly. “It’s...it’s still the night cycle, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but I couldn’t sleep either,” she shrugged, reaching over and gently wrapping her hand around his wrist. He looked at her, confused. “Come on. Let’s go get some of that nasty tea of yours.”

“It’s not nasty,” he said, sounding hurt, but he followed her anyway. 

Chopper was still lurking outside of his door, but she threw him a quick glare and he didn’t follow but rolled back to his charging station as she made her way to the kitchen, opening the cabinets (they had never been this organized before, and she didn’t know how she’d dealt with it in the past) and pulling out her own mug and one for him, grabbing his strange-smelling tea packets and dropping them in a cup, running hot water over them. He reached up past her--she tried to ignore the strange rush of heat at his proximity, hoping he couldn’t tell--and pulled out two little dishes, covering the top of the mugs with them.

“Tea can’t steep right when you don’t cover it up,” he said by means of explanation, and she nodded, the situation too strange for her to do anything else as he carried their teas over to the little table and sat down.

“What in this galaxy ever prompted you to drink this the first time?” she asked, wrinkling up her nose as she moved the makeshift lid off the top of it, breathing in its strangely bitter scent.

He took a deep drink of it despite its heat, wincing a little bit as well.

“It’s an acquired taste, I’ll admit.”

“You don’t even like it!” she blinked, staring at him, wondering if this night could get any stranger. “Why would you even drink something you don’t like?”

“It...helps clear my mind,” he said, closing his eyes. “It...I had a friend who loved this stuff. I hated it, even as a kid, but she swore--” he stopped, staring down at the cup. “She swore by it. Swore I’d like it when I grew up. Guess I still haven’t got there, yet.”

He’d never talked about his childhood before, and she leaned forward, realizing that this was probably a rare occurrence for both of them.

“I just keep thinking maybe one day it’ll grow on me,” he smiled sadly, staring down at his cup. “Like maybe it’ll be the one area in which I wouldn’t have been such an utter disappointment to her.”

“Hey, you’re not--I’m sure she’s not disappointed in you,” Hera said, reaching over and closing her hand around his, green on tan, and he looked up at her, his aquamarine eyes so tired. “Maybe we could go visit her sometime--”

“She’s dead, Hera,” he closed his eyes, but squeezed her hand back gently. “But thank you anyway.”

He’d only been on the ship with her for a month, tops--how had it only been a month?--but Gorse felt so much longer ago, and all the rules she’d set up about swearing she would keep enough barriers between the two of them that he wouldn’t get the wrong idea seemed so far from her now, so irrelevant in the strange dim lights of the night cycle with both of them sitting in pajamas (Kanan’s sporting a t-shirt with some Bith band she’d never heard of and sleep pants, and her in a hoodie she’d bought with a Y-wing on it so long ago that she didn’t even remember where she’d found it) that she wasn’t even sure what she was doing.

There was one thing she was sure of, though. She knew what it felt like to be a disappointment. She could still remember her own father’s anger, his seething disappointment that she was abandoning Ryloth for something as trivial as, oh, the freedom of the rest of the known galaxy, the fact that he still hadn’t spoke to her, and in her heart, she hurt for Kanan Jarrus, who was barely more than a kid himself, really.

“You’re not a disappointment,” she said, and he looked up, surprised at how forceful her voice was. “I don’t know what kind of expectations you feel like you had to live up to, but you are enough, just as you are, okay?”

And for a moment, there was such a look of tender affection in his eyes that her heart felt like it stopped or maybe like it sped up all at once as she walked up to this dangerous line that she knew better than to cross--

“Well, Captain Syndulla, if I’m good enough for you, then quite honestly, that’s good enough,” he winked, and she rolled her eyes, letting go of his hand and taking a drink of her tea to try and stop the flush from creeping up her cheeks, then shivering immediately at how bitter it was. 

“I’m going back to bed,” she said, making a face as she shoved the rest of the tea over to him. He took her mug without question, sitting aside his empty one and starting on hers. “Let me know if you need anything.”

“Company?” he arched an eyebrow.

“Chopper’s right in his charging bay if you need him,” she rolled her eyes, walking back to her room and sitting back down on the edge of her bunk.

She was still awake when she heard Kanan return to his room a few minutes later, her own thoughts and heart still racing.

Neither of them slept for the rest of that night cycle.


	2. From Where You Are

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Almost a year after joining her crew on the eve of Empire Day, Hera realizes Kanan has vanished.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This takes place almost a year after the events of A New Dawn. :)

The Ghost was docked at Lothal. It had become a sort of home base for her of sorts, a quick and easy place to stop between runs, between jobs for Fulcrum, and resupply. Kanan seemed to prefer backwater Outer Rim worlds--she’d mentioned Coruscant only once in the months they’d served together and abruptly learned from his sudden silence to never bring that planet up again--and Lothal was about as backwater and Outer Rim as they came, save for maybe Dantooine. 

And while there might have been an Imperial presence, it wasn’t as bad as it was on other worlds, and the people here could use the business. She felt like she was winning on every front with Lothal--well, almost every front. There was something about it that seemed to nag at Kanan. She’d asked him about it once, and he’d only shrugged, explaining that it felt like there was something he was supposed to do here that he just couldn’t remember every time they came planetside. 

Still, he seemed at ease, she felt as safe as one could feel whilst rebelling against the Empire, and that was enough.

It was hard to believe that they’d been working together for almost two years, now. Hera couldn’t imagine how she’d ever done it before. She and Kanan were the perfect team, working in tandem with almost machine-like efficiency.

Chopper had even stopped trying to trip him every time he exited his room in the morning, though she wasn’t sure if that was cause for celebration or suspicion.

Fulcrum had told her to stay put for a few days before going on their next run, which made sense. Empire Day was tomorrow, which meant Imperial presence was at an all-time high. Much as Empire Day really made her want to blow something up, she knew that Fulcrum was right--it was best to lay low, for now.

And after the job she and Kanan had just run on Felucia, she could do with a vacation, though this stint on Lothal was shaping up to be anything but a typical vacation.

“Chopper, where’s Kanan?” she asked after the boredom had finally gotten to her. The Ghost was clean, all their cargo was unloaded, and Fulcrum wouldn’t contact them until after Empire Day. A never-ending list of chores had become manageable with Kanan Jarrus as part of her crew, and there was nothing to do. Hera was good at many things, but staying still wasn’t one of them.

Chopper gave a couple of cheerful whirs and beeps that loosely translated to a cheerful, Maybe he left. Or died!

Well, maybe Chopper hadn’t accepted Kanan as much as she’d hoped he had. She sighed, rolling her eyes.

“No, really.”

Chopper threw his arms up in the air and rolled off, clearly having no intent of being useful. Hera sighed, then shrugged, even though Chopper wasn’t paying attention--during the time she’d spent alone on the Ghost before Kanan, she’d developed a habit of conversation with herself that Kanan had often teased her for when he’d noticed her doing it. 

At least finding Kanan would keep her occupied, though she wasn’t exactly sure what they’d do once she found him. He was pretty good at coming up with snide and quiet commentary as he recounted what he imagined the stormtroopers were talking about under their helmets to Hera. 

She could do with some humor right now.

Outside, patriotic bunting was hung from building to building, and Imperial flags waved cheerfully in the breeze. Hera forced herself to smile--looking anything but happy during the days leading up to Empire Day festivities was nothing short of treasonous--and made her way to the cantina. It was close enough to dinner that maybe Kanan had decided to go get something to eat.

That didn’t seem right either, though. He nearly always took his meals with her, insisting that they set a good example of family time for Chopper, which always made her roll her eyes. 

“Chopper’s not our son, Kanan,” Hera had reminded him after one particularly cheesy attempt he’d made at making her dinner for her birthday. He cooked surprisingly well for a man who had lived the life of a drifting bachelor prior to taking up employment on her ship.

“He’s clearly not mine,” Kanan had responded, nodding sagely while Chopper beeped out profanity in the back that Kanan perpetually pretended not to hear. “It’s okay for you to have kids from a previous relationship.”

“I’ll keep that in mind in case we ever have kids,” she had dryly replied, rolling her eyes as it was a physical impossibility, both by genetics and science and by the fact that, as she frequently had to remind them, they weren’t married and certainly weren’t a thing.

“We’ll adopt kids someday, Hera, and this ship will be full of them,” Kanan had replied, arching an eyebrow, and she’d snorted her caf out of her nose, which had kind of ruined the moment.

They’d only had that conversation last week. Somehow, she felt like Kanan had been part of her life forever.

Except for right now, she thought as she bit her lip, frustrated. Right now, Kanan Jarrus had mysteriously vanished, and there was a part of her that felt strange about the idea of him having dinner without her. Almost like jealousy, if she was honest.

She wasn’t ready to be honest just yet, so she shoved that thought down as she walked down the staircase into Old Jho’s cantina.

The atmosphere was...off. Different. Cheerful, patriotic music played through the speakers, but it felt dissonant to Hera. The laughter from the occupants seemed tighter, stilted, as if forced out as part of an elaborate facade.

Who was she kidding. Of course it was a facade--nobody on Lothal was happy about Empire Day, even if they were forced to act like it.

She glanced around, figuring that if nothing else maybe Old Jho himself had seen Kanan today, but a flash of green caught her eyes, and--there he was. Sitting at the bar.

Hera took a deep breath and tried not to immediately jump to the conclusion that the Kanan of Gorse was reemerging. Casual drinking was one thing, and she hadn’t told him too much about the Rebellion, but alcohol tended to get people talkative, and she’d explained to Kanan a thousand times that they couldn’t risk getting caught. That was the main reason for her no-alcohol policy on board--they lived to stay a step ahead of the Empire, which was hard to do if their steps were sloppy.

She hopped up on a stool next to him, noting a glass of something that was strong enough that she could smell it from where she was at. It looked mostly untouched, which gave her a small feeling of hope as she poked his shoulder.

He didn’t jump--he never did. No matter how many times she’d tried, she’d never been able to catch Kanan Jarrus off guard. She had her suspicions as to why that was--she’d seen him use the Force, she’d seen him snap to lightsaber-ready position once after a nightmare--but they had never, ever talked about it, other than the one time he’d told her not to tell.

Of course, there were lots of things she’d never talked to him about either, including the way her heart fluttered when his turquoise eyes made contact with hers.

“Kanan,” she hissed, and he looked over, eyes distant. Maybe this wasn’t the first glass? No...he still seemed present in a way that suggested that he wasn’t drunk. “That smells terrible.”

He looked back at the glass as if he’d just noticed it sitting here.

“Tasted terrible too,” he said, and there was something in his voice--an apology, maybe? Something was wrong. “Wouldn’t have stopped me in the past, but it’d seem I’m out of practice.”

“Which is for the best,” Hera reminded him pointedly, sliding her eyes over to a booth where a group of stormtroopers were having dinner, their helmets lined up on the edge of the table, staring at them with blank visors. “Remember?”

“I remember too much,” Kanan said, and he sounded a thousand years old in that moment. “Maybe I’ll take it back to the ship with me.”

“You know my policy.”

“You can lock me in my room,” he tried to smile, but it didn’t quite meet his eyes and it came out like a grimace instead. “Post Chopper on guard duty. You never have to know.”

“What’s wrong, Kanan?” she asked, going for a different approach instead.

“Nothing has to be wrong, Hera,” he shrugged, giving her the same flippant smile he’d used on Gorse, and she wrinkled her eyebrows at him, frowning. No. They’d moved past this. She’d just had months and months of easy friendship with him. Where was this coming from? “Maybe this is just who I am.”

“It’s not,” she said, and she paused, considering her words. She didn’t want to tell him who he was--her father had done that too many times, had felt like he could determine the course of her entire life by telling her who she was and what was important to her. It hadn’t worked for her, and she had no desire to impose that on someone else. 

But...this wasn’t who Kanan Jarrus was. She knew that. She knew that from the way he got so frustrated at the injustices he saw, the way he took extra care when passing out relief packages from Fulcrum to kids, the defensive way he got anytime someone shot her a lewd look, positioning himself between her and anyone who thought to give her trouble like a knight with a shield. Kanan wasn’t the man she’d seen on Gorse--no, there was much more to him than that.

“You’re not,” she repeated, and he looked up at her, and she tried to convey that, her green eyes locked into his turquoise one. “You’re more than that, and you know it.”

“Maybe that’s all in your head,” he said, reaching out to tap her forehead, and her hand darted up and caught his wrist without her even thinking about it, moving his hand away. 

“I see you for who you really are,” she said, slowly, deliberately. “Whether you like it or not.”

“You have no idea who I really am, Hera,” he said, a little colder this time.

She had options, and she was aware of all of them at once, like a web that spun out with her and Kanan at the origin. She could walk away and leave him to his brooding and let him actually drink the glass in front of him instead of staring at it, leave him to get whatever this was out of his system before they moved on.

Or...or she could walk with him through whatever was in his heart.

The first option was safer.

Hera had never been one for taking the easy way out, though.

“Then tell me,” she said, crossing her arms and staring up at him. A challenge. 

His turquoise eyes met hers, defiant, and she wondered if maybe she’d pushed too far--and then he looked past her.

Someone had brought in a projector, and the far wall of Old Jho’s was currently reflecting documentaries of the Empire’s achievements. Hera looked behind her too to see what he was staring at.

There was no sound that she could hear, but the captioning was on and telling a tired story of Jedi rebellion, of how the clones had valiantly fought to stop the Jedi from their martial coup, and the video shortage was from a clone trooper’s helmet’s HUD, a Jedi fighting as she was gunned down--

She’d always suspected, but she whirled to face Kanan, who was as pale as she’d ever seen him--paler even than the time he’d gotten sick off some planet where he’d eaten something clearly not compatible with human digestive systems--and the glass was in his hands, which were shaking, the potent-smelling drink pouring down his fingers.

“Come on,” Hera said suddenly, knowing that whatever happened next, she had to get him out of here, away from this, and back to the Ghost. “Come on, Kanan, we need to go.”

She stood up and managed to pry the glass from his hands, sitting it down on the bar and pulling him to his feet, though he wavered a little as he stood. She wasn’t sure if his hands were wet from sweat or the drink.

In front of the stairs leading out of the building, a stormtrooper stood waiting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that this one ended in the middle of something. I intended each of these chapters to be able to stand on its own but sometimes I just can't stop writing. >_<


	3. Ghosts with Just Voices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kanan tells Hera about Order 66 and the truth about who he is. Also, this chapter picks up immediately where Chapter 2 left off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Mentions of suicidal thoughts. They're light and super-vague, but better safe than sorry.

The staircase that led back up to the street level wasn’t wide, and the trooper was positioned right in the middle, enough to effectively block away any chance of a inconspicuous escape. 

She could still feel Kanan’s hand shaking in hers, and she laced her fingers through his, squeezing as tight as she could without alerting the trooper.

She wasn’t sure if it was an attempt to ground him to reality or stop her own racing heart. Maybe it was both.

You’re not doing anything wrong, Hera, she reminded herself, forcing a calm smile that was entirely at odds with her erratic heartbeat. Though normally she was up to something, there was nothing inherently wrong about her going to the cantina to pick up her wayward help--at least, as long as they didn’t ask too many questions.

“Everything all right, ma’am?” the trooper asked. With his helmet on, Hera couldn’t read his expression or his voice, which put her at a disadvantage. Was he suspicious? Was she _making_ him more suspicious?

“He’s just had a little too much for the night,” Hera smiled sweetly, using the same charm she’d used to work her way out of many situations--with her parents, when she’d stayed up too late as a kid, how long ago that felt now--and she let go of Kanan’s hand long enough to wrap her arm around his waist instead, hoping she could convey her own unspoken words to him--I’m here, you’re okay, Kanan\--while convincing the trooper that nothing was wrong at all.

“He looks terrible,” the trooper agreed amicably, leaning forward to peer at Kanan, who flinched away. “Got a problem, kid?”

Beneath her tight grip, Hera could feel all of Kanan’s muscles tense at once, and she squeezed him closer to her, hoping to the Force and all the stars that he would just calm down--

“Don’t call me--”

“He can’t hold his drink very well,” Hera rolled her eyes, moving her left foot just in front of Kanan and hoping he was still with her enough to read the unspoken message. Let me lead. “As you can clearly see. Thought he’d be joining the festivities early--I need to get him home for him to sober up enough to enjoy the parade tomorrow, you know?”

“Yeah, I imagine the sound of TIEs on a hangover would be rough,” the trooper laughed, stepping aside, and it took all of Hera’s strength not to bolt past him in that moment. “Better get him home.”

The trooper headed to the table with his friends as she held in her sigh of relief, letting go of Kanan’s waist, but he still wasn’t moving, standing paralyzed as if watching ghosts she couldn’t see. She clamped her hand around his and yanked him up the stairs, refusing to let go of him as she dragged him through the streets, back to the spaceport, and into the _Ghost_ , closing the ramp up behind them.

It was only as the ship gave its customary hiss to indicate the door was fully closed that she finally felt like she could breathe again. Her hands were shaking as bad as Kanan’s were at this point, and she clenched them into fists. She could deal with her own panic later--right now she had to figure out what in the stars could have rattled the unshakable Kanan Jarrus.

One glare sent Chopper scurrying back to the engine room as she led Kanan over to the closest thing the Ghost had to a sofa, placing her hands on his shoulders and firmly pushing him down. She sat down next to him, crossing her arms and waiting.

She’d waited a long time. She’d waited longer, if she needed to, but she wasn’t going anywhere. Not now.

“I really hate Empire Day,” he finally said once it was clear she was as relentless as ever.

“That’s tomorrow, Kanan.”

“I hate Empire Day Eve more,” he cocked an eyebrow, but there was none of his normal spunk in it--a hollow gesture as haunted as his turquoise eyes.

“You were fine last year. Remember? We watched the parade and you gave the colorful commentary about Imperial fashion and how they all look the same,” she said, not giving up. She’d always wanted to give him his space, but they’d been together long enough that she was fairly certain now that space wouldn’t be what he needed.

“This...this one’s different,” he said, wiping his hands on the backs of the knees of his pants as if he’d just noticed that he’d spilled his drink on them. 

“Because it’s the ten-year anniversary?” she asked quietly. The preparations for Empire Day had been even bigger than usual this year--another reason Fulcrum had wanted them to lay low.

“I was fourteen when it happened,” he was staring past her, and she waited. This was the closest they had ever come to talking about...well, anything in his past, for sure. She could feel that something big was coming, something important. 

“When we went from Republic to Empire?” she prompted after he didn’t say anything, determined not to let this chance slip away.

“No. After Order 66,” he said, shuddering.

The words meant nothing to her, and she didn’t know how to convey that to him when it had clearly taken all his strength just to whisper them out loud. She reached over and put a hand on his knee, wishing she could send him her strength through the Force. 

“What happened?” she asked, squeezing his knee gently. He was still staring past her at a blank wall, as if the answers were somewhere in the layers of durasteel, just out of sight and reach.

“I was a commander in the Clone Wars,” he said, his eyes still fixed at a blank point on the wall.

At fourteen? She wanted to express disbelief, but she already knew--there was only one way that would happen.

“Because you were a Jedi,” she whispered.

“Padawan. Still learning. Not a real Jedi, not yet,” he said quietly. “I...did well in the chaos of battle. Probably another reason I would have never made a very good Jedi--we were supposed to be about peace, right? But I liked fighting with my master, with the clones. They were my family, you know? Well, I mean, I wasn’t allowed to be attached to them, but it was the closest we came. Comrades. We had each others’ backs.”

He lapsed into silence, his hands shaking again, and Hera angled herself so she was facing him, taking both his hands into hers. She wondered if he’d ever talked about this before.

No. She didn’t wonder--she was certain that he never had. She squeezed his hands, waiting. 

“There was no Jedi coup. No master plan to assassinate the Chancellor. None of it. In one fell swoop, our emperor gave the clones Order 66--the order to turn and kill the Jedi. My master--” his voice broke, and he finally looked at her, something so helpless in his eyes and she pressed her forehead to his, fighting her own tears. Minutes of silence. She’d wait as long as it took. “My master sacrificed herself so I could escape and the chancellor declared himself Emperor. I tried to go back to Coruscant--there was a beacon, telling us to come home--” His voice was thick, the word _home_ so loaded and she knew, she understood that, she knew what exile felt like, but at least hers has been self-imposed. “It was a trap. I managed to jump out and...the padawan died, and Kanan Jarrus was born. That’s what her sacrifice bought. _This_ ,” he said, his voice clearly disgusted.

“Kanan,” she started, but he shook his head, pulling away from her. She kept her hands closed around his, refusing to let go even as he leaned back so she could see him better.

“No. She was _good_ , Hera. The galaxy needed her way more than it ever needed me. Her dying so I could live...it’s like some cosmic joke. I should have been the one to die that day.”

“She didn’t want that, Kanan,” Hera closed her own eyes to hold back her own tears, taking a deep breath, finding her balance in the chaos of her own emotions. 

“I didn’t know how to survive. Sure, I could swing a lightsaber, fly a Jedi starfighter, and recite the Jedi Code, but what usefulness was that? I barely even scraped by. There were a few times--” he stopped, but he didn’t have to continue. She heard the words he didn’t speak, the hopelessness. “But I couldn’t. It would have made her sacrifice even more worthless, you know?”

“Her sacrifice wasn’t worthless, Kanan,” Hera hesitated, then closed the distance between them, wrapping her arms around him and breathing in the scent of him--crisp and clean like the soap he used, a scent that she had come to associate with home without even realizing it. She knew better than to return to Ryloth, and he couldn’t return to the remains of the Jedi Temple, but she’d found home here on the _Ghost_ \--with him--and if nothing else, she wanted to be able to provide that same sense of security for him. “She knew you had a purpose in this, you know?” 

She could envision Kanan Jarrus serving in a proper Rebellion with her, if this movement ever gained the traction it needed--and Fulcrum swore that those days were coming. She didn’t know how he’d feel about that, and she certainly knew that now wasn’t the time to bring it up, but there was a part of her--a part that had a hold on her heart more than she’d like to admit--that didn’t want to imagine doing any of this without him.

“The galaxy doesn’t need me,” he laughed hollowly.

“I do.”

She hadn’t intended on saying it, hadn’t intended on admitting it, hadn’t intended on it even happening, but there it was. 

If there was one thing that Hera Syndulla believed in then it was the importance of refusing to cheapen her words, so she just accepted that they were out there, her green eyes meeting his surprised turquoise ones evenly, waiting for the inevitable joke or a response that would take her further than she was ready to go just yet, possibly ruining their easy camaraderie, their deep friendship, _everything_ \--

“Well, if I’m useful for you, then I guess I’ll stick around a little longer,” he smiled, but it wasn’t his typical, teasing, flirtatious smile--it was just kind. Genuine. Appreciative. And all her worries that she’d pushed this too fast, too far, that she’d inadvertently led him somewhere she wasn’t willing to follow--all of that faded away as he squeezed her hands back, standing up and leaving her still a little shocked on the couch as he headed for the door, still tired, still broken, but yet, even still, a little brighter than she’d ever seen him before.

She watched as he walked to the door, then hesitated.

“Hera,” he said, his back still to her. “...thanks. For that.”

“Anytime, Kanan,” she said. “You can always talk to me.”

She meant it. 

“Not just for that,” he said, and he looked back at her over his shoulder, and she was struck again by his eyes, his voice, his smile. “You make me a better man, Hera. Thanks for that, too.”

And without giving her a moment to even catch her breath, he headed for his room, the door whisking closed behind him leaving Hera with feelings whose magnitude she wasn’t prepared for and a heart that had never raced quite like this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter titles have all been from "Set the Fire to the Third Bar" by Snow Patrol, but I think I've exhausted it for numbers of random phrases I can pull out of that, so we'll move on from there. Also, I figured out how to work the italics HTML, for better or worse. Thanks to everyone who's commented or kudos'ed (kudoed?) so far. You all make me feel like a real person <3


	4. Those Distant Bells

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Ghost crew expands!

Kanan Jarrus had spent half his life now trying to convince himself that boring was okay--good, even, for someone like him--but sometimes, the mundane was just more than he could handle.

Jelucan was beginning to get to that point with him.

Once the Empire had decided to “help” Jelucan, its mining industry had boomed, right along with its Imperial presence and pollution. Of course, that was because when the Empire wanted something from a planet, it didn’t stop until it had exhausted every resource that the planet had and left it barren and desolate, and in that sense, Jelucan was a lot like many of the other Outer Rim worlds he’d been to--overworked, underpaid, and suffering miserably.

He’d be trained his whole life that anger led to hate, hate led to suffering, suffering led to the dark side, yada-yada, but when Kanan Jarrus looked out across the people in this small mining town on Jelucan, coughing under pollution and suffering under a regime that couldn’t care less about the Jelucan people if it tried, he was angry. 

In fact, one might even say he hated the Empire.

How far he had fallen. Master Billaba would be so disappointed.

He swallowed the bitter taste of that and focused instead on his only job--watching the _Ghost_ \--while he waited for Hera to return.

He’d offered to go with her--multiple times, once by sneakily trying to get her to agree to it while she was fine-tuning the hyperdrive after a close scrape with the Empire--but she’d refused each time. She was meeting Fulcrum on this planet, in person, and until Kanan was ready to fully commit to the Rebellion, then he couldn’t meet Fulcrum.

Kanan was fully ready to commit to a lot of things, but starting another war wasn’t one of them, so he waited on the ship like Hera asked him to, sitting in the cargo bay and sorting his collection of mechanical oddities.

A beam emitter. A focusing array. Little pieces that on their own could mean anything, but assembled would only symbolize treason. He didn’t know why he kept picking them up, but it was like a compulsion he couldn’t stop.

You have a lightsaber already that you never use. What in the galaxy would you ever need to build another for?

He didn’t know, but the need to keep collecting was too strong, and since they weren’t dangerous as long as they didn’t assemble to make a lightsaber, then it didn’t hurt anything, right?

Metal rammed into his back and sent his parts flying out of his hands.

Hera Syndulla frequently commented on how impressed she was that she could never startle him, and he didn’t have the heart to tell her that because her soul radiated through the Force like the lights in the grand hall of the temple that he’d grown up in, that because she felt like home he’d never ever _not_ notice her.

Chopper, on the other hand, reminded him of a tempermental astromech that he’d been stuck with on a mission with once as a kid, and as such, did _not_ shine to his soul in the force and was impossibly good at catching him off guard. Kanan had to take extra precautions when Hera was around to ensure that Chopper didn’t surprise him in front of her, but he’d been distracted.

“Do you have to do that?” he hissed, and Chopper chirped out a series of beeps laced with even more profanity than he used around Hera, which was saying something, because Chopper didn’t exactly hold back around Hera. “I wasn’t even bothering you!”

Kanan wasn’t exactly as good at translating Chopper’s ramblings as Hera was, but he knew enough to get by.

“My existence can’t be enough to bother you,” he rolled his eyes, turning back to his parts and scooping them back into the little pouch he carried them all in. “That’s not hardly a fair excuse. Your existence bothers me, and I don’t go ramming into you.”

He stood up, staring down at the beeping little droid.

“I could _too_ beat you in a fight,” he lifted an eyebrow as the droid rammed into his leg again. He threw his hands up, exasperated.

And then he felt it.

In the ten years since the Republic and the Jedi had fallen, Kanan had avoided using the Force anymore than absolutely necessary for survival. There were practical reasons for this--using the Force would draw unwanted attention, using the Force could get him in trouble, using the Force would ruin his new identity of not a Jedi\--but more than anything, it was because any connection to the Force brought him closer to all those he had lost in the war.

There is no death, there is only the Force. And when all his Jedi friends--Sammo, Tai, Master Billaba--when they died in Order 66, in the Jedi massacre, they’d all joined the cosmic force, right? So if he used the Force...it would be the closest he would come to the ghosts of his past, ghosts he was trying to leave _in_ his past.

But now, here, standing in the cargo bay of the _Ghost_ , Kanan Jarrus felt the Force in a way that he hadn’t felt since he’d used the name Caleb Dume, guiding him.

Here.

On Jelucan.

He shook his head, trying to clear his mind. Maybe this was just a result of not sleeping well (even though he’d been sleeping better than he had in ages), or not having enough caf (also impossible--he and Hera lived off of caf), or maybe he had a concussion from Chopper ramming into him (also unlikely, as his brain was in his head, not his spine or his shins, which were Chopper’s favorite attack points). 

No, this was the Force.

I don’t want this, he thought, closing his eyes. He hadn’t wanted this in years, not since he’d lost everything.

But the Force wasn’t--well, a force--that really cared about what people wanted. It was like a river, mighty and rushing, and it did what it did without any sort of interference, especially from a life form as small and powerless as Kanan Jarrus.

“Chopper, I need you to guard the ship,” he said, carefully, hoping the droid would cooperate. He wished the Force was more specific--was Hera in trouble? Did she need him? He didn’t feel any immediate threat, but the pull was there, so it had to be something important.

If it wasn’t a trap, that was. He swallowed, looking down at the droid.

“You’ll do a better job than me anyway,” he added, and the droid beeped with a self-righteous indignation that would have made Kanan fight back if the need to follow the Force wasn’t currently overriding every other impulse he had.

He exited the ship to Chopper still beeping his own praises and headed towards the center of town.

Kanan had thought the situation on Lothal was rough, but it had nothing on the people of Jelucan--worn down, tired, filthy from the perpetual haze of pollution from the mines that hung over the town. Kanan pulled his own shirt collar up to keep from breathing the air in and wished he’d sent some sort of filter with Hera.

Of course, she wouldn’t have gone for it. He’d tried making sure she’d taken a coat with her on the last planet they were at, to which she’d immediately reminded him that he was neither her mother nor her husband and she was a strong, independent woman who could make her own decisions on whether to wear a coat or not.

Kanan knew she was independent--it was one of the reasons he liked her so much. She made plans, put her mind to them, and got them done, guided by nothing but her own tenacity and moral compass, and he admired her for that.

He hadn’t wanted to tell her that, though.

“You should at least consider taking my advice on wearing a coat. We’re basically married, sort of, at least,” he’d winked instead, patting Chopper on the head like the family dog, who had then went on a tirade so profane that even Hera had finally had to walk from the room to keep from laughing.

He’d never get tired of hearing her laugh.

The cantina ahead of him was at the end of a dusty road and reminded him a little of Old Jho’s--the kind of local place that needed nothing more than its own reputation to bring in business. (Or maybe it was successful because it was the only place in town. Kanan wasn’t too sure for this one.) 

He looked around. Surely the Force wasn’t bringing him to a cantina.

The draw continued.

So the Force _was_ bringing him to a cantina. Fair enough. He ducked through the low door and walked in, searching for Hera like he subconsciously did every time he entered a room.

If Hera was here, she wasn’t in the main room, but oddly, it wasn’t green that caught his attention, but purple.

The draw from the Force subsided as Kanan inspected the figure sitting at the table--purple, furry, taller than even he was, and slouched over some drink.

He kept waiting for the draw to come back, to show him more, but it was clear--this was it.

At least the cantina was blessedly empty of stormtroopers, not that he could exactly blame them for not wanting to be in here. Even the floors were covered with a layer of dust that people kept tracking in from outside. Stars, Kanan wasn’t even that surprised when he moved closer and saw that the being in front of him had dust matted in his fur.

“That’s close enough,” the purple being said, lifting a hairy hand as Kanan quietly walked over. “There’s plenty of other seats open, kid.”

The immediate instinct to bristle was there, but Kanan swallowed it down--those days are over\--and sat down across from the person instead. The being eyed him warily--yellow eyes that looked dangerous and tired all at once.

“Didn’t you hear me?” he repeated, then switched languages to something Kanan didn’t recognize.

“I heard you,” Kanan replied in Basic, and the man huffed, clearly irritated.

“Then don’t make me repeat myself.”

If only the Force would have hung around long enough to give him a glimpse of what exactly he was supposed to say to this person. That would have been far more beneficial than the sudden nervousness he felt. It’d been awhile since he’d had decent conversation with anyone other than Hera or Chopper--working with Hera had a tendency to do that. She was all in, all the time, and as a result, Kanan didn’t exactly have a lot of spare socializing time.

(He had to admit that even if he would have, he still preferred her company.)

“Nah, man. Nobody should have to drink alone,” he said, plopping down at the second seat at the table--honestly, the guy was big enough that the table for two really comfortably sat only him--and called the ancient server droid over, going for a glass of something cheap. 

“You have no taste,” the guy wrinkled up his nose.

“From the smell of yours, you probably don’t have any taste buds left to know,” Kanan lifted an eyebrow. “If you even have a memory of this happening by the time it’s over.”

“Maybe I just hold my drink better than you, kid,” the guy said dryly.

“Maybe,” Kanan shrugged, taking a sip of his when the droid brought it over. It was bitter and had a bite to it--he’d have to make sure to take it slowly. Hera would not be impressed if he came back buzzed, and honestly, it had been long enough now that he wasn’t entirely sure how much he wanted to relive his drifter days. 

The two drank in silence before the purple guy finally sat down his mug, crossing his arms.

“She sent you, didn’t she?” he asked.

“Who?” Kanan asked, as innocently as he possibly could, which wasn’t particularly difficult given that he had no idea who the guy was talking about.

“The Twi’lek,” he said, and Kanan’s heart raced a little faster. “The green one. The pilot.”

The best pilot in the whole damn galaxy, Kanan thought, but there was no need to add that, so he just arched an eyebrow and waited.

“You tell her I’m not interested in joining her little--” he paused, looking around. There were no stormtroopers, but that didn’t mean the Empire didn’t have ears everywhere. “Party.”

If Hera had wanted Kanan on this recruitment job, she would have brought him along. He knew this.

But if she wanted the purple guy to work for her, and he turned her down, and Kanan could somehow get him to say yes...that would impress her, wouldn’t it?

Kanan, no, the small voice of reason in the back of his mind warned him.

He thought about it for the span of half a second.

Kanan, yes, he told the little voice.

“And why not?” Kanan took a sip of his drink, leaning forward, enjoying the burn as it went down his throat. Finally. Something to do. Anything to break the monotony of this planet. “It’s quite the party, I hear.”

“You must be the wayward...fighter….drifter...thing…that she has with her,” he said, clearly not impressed. “If you’re her idea of a soldier, I could see why she’d try to recruit me.”

Kanan tried not to let that one sting. Hera knew he was a Jedi. She knew he could hold his own, and she wouldn’t betray his secret. That was enough.

“Wayward fighter-drifter-thing at your service,” he said, holding out his hand. “Kanan Jarrus.”

The purple guy stared at him for a moment, then rolled his eyes, reaching out with a furry hand to shake Kanan’s.

“Zeb,” he replied.

“Just Zeb?” 

“For now,” Zeb answered, and Kanan shrugged. Acceptable enough answer. “I’m still not interested.”

“Aw, come on. You have to have a reason, at least.”

“I’m not interested. That’s enough of a reason.”

Yet the Force had brought him here, so there had to be something more to this.

Center yourself, Caleb. All the answers you need are in front of you.

His heart twisted at the thought of Master Depa Billaba, but he tried to remember his teachings, buying time by taking a sip of his drink and simply _feeling_.

Inside of Zeb, there were all the same things he felt--anger, hate, frustration--but underneath all of that wasn’t the pull of the dark side, but a gaping hole of loss.

“Nah. You’ve got a better reason than that. Tell me what it is, and I’ll buy you a drink.”

This made Zeb pause.

“Any drink on the menu?”

Kanan gave a quick glance at the menu, but this wasn’t a high end place. He could fork over enough for a glass of whatever the big guy wanted.

“Yep,” Kanan said, leaning forward, his elbows on the table. “But you better have a real reason.”

“Your pilot doesn’t know what she’s getting herself into,” Zeb said, leaning forward as well and talking quietly. “She’s nice. Idealistic. I know the type.”

“You don’t know Hera.”

“Kid, I used to _be_ like your Hera. She doesn’t understand the might of the Empire.”

Kanan bristled. Of course Hera understood what she was up against--it was one of the reasons she fought and fought so hard for what mattered to her, so that other people didn’t have to suffer the way her people had.

“She--”

But Zeb held a hand up, and Kanan waited, biting his lip to keep from rushing to her defense. Zeb had agreed to give him his reasons--and Kanan would wait, like he said he would. 

“She’s seen loss, I don’t doubt that, but she doesn’t know what it’s like to have her entire people wiped out,” Zeb said, and though his voice was even, the gasping, gaping pull of sorrow in the Force around him threatened to pull Kanan in and drown in him in the same grief that Zeb was drowning in despite his calm outer composure. “I can’t fight alongside someone who doesn’t understand that magnitude of loss. Who doesn’t understand the true horror of what they’re fighting against.”

And the sorrow pulled that much harder because it was his own, the same darkness Kanan Jarrus held within his own soul, a grief that only came after losing all your people.

“Now, I’ll take one of those Miner’s Respites, if you don’t care, and preferably one with one of those little meiloorun fruits on the edges of the glass,” he said, but Kanan was still trying to ground himself back in the moment, to bring himself back--

The acrid smell of smoke and blaster fire--

Traitors, traitors, but they weren’t traitors--

A gaping hole in the Force where Master Depa Billaba used to shine--

Stay away from Coruscant--

The Jedi Order has fallen--

I am the only one left, aren’t I?

“Jarrus?” Zeb’s voice sounded like it was at the end of a very long tunnel, and Kanan gripped the edges of the table, not now, not now. “Kanan?”

“You’re right,” he finally said, though he was still struggling to breathe properly. “Hera doesn’t know what that’s like. She’s never lost her entire people.”

“I know, that’s what I just sa--”

“--but I have,” Kanan met his eyes evenly.

A pause, then Zeb laughed, a barking, angry sound.

“There’s still plenty of your kind left in the galaxy. Tons of them here, as a matter of--”

“Not humans,” Kanan said through gritted teeth. He pulled out the bag of parts and emptied them on the table, trusting only the Force, because it wasn’t like he could use it here, could say those words, could admit the thing that it had taken him so long to even tell Hera about--

Zeb picked through the pieces, clearly confused, but stopped over one of them--the beam emitter.

“Your people were warriors?” he asked. There was still confusion in his voice.

“You could say that,” Kanan closed his eyes. His people had never wanted to be warriors, but that’s what they had been in the end, right? Generals and commanders and warriors, fighting, all of them.

Kanan reached for his parts, glancing around to make sure no one was watching--and no one was--before using the tiniest bit of the Force to bring them across the table into his hand, where he deposited them back into his bag.

Zeb saw, and from his eyes, he knew.

Kanan was distantly aware that if this failed, he’d probably have to kill this Zeb to make sure he didn’t speak.

But the Force...it had led him here. Guided him. He had to trust it, even if the betrayal of the Jedi made that the hardest trust he’d ever given.

“You’re the only one of your people left?” he asked, and Kanan gave a curt nod. “You know, that’s a dangerous thing to just admit to a stranger.”

“You’re not a stranger if you know how it feels,” Kanan said.

“You know what, kid? Drinks are on me this time.”

###

“Kanan!”

Her voice was like music, like always, and she ran up to him as he ambled up the stairs of the _Ghost_. Kanan grinned--he could get used to this kind of greeting.

But instead of worry in her eyes, it was anger, and maybe Kanan didn’t quite want to get used to _this_ kind of greeting after all.

“Where have you been?” she asked. Her voice was calm enough, but Kanan could feel her emotions swirling in the Force and centered himself, trying to tone down on that. He’d never wanted to invade her privacy--her feelings were her own business.

Besides, he didn’t need the Force to read her eyes, which were blazing.

“The cantina,” he replied calmly. “Chopper had the ship. He’s better at it than me anyway.”

“You left my ship unguarded so you could go get a drink?” she asked, her voice low and dangerous.

“Not exactly,” Kanan said, unsure of how to even explain it.

“He left the ship to go get me,” Zeb said from behind him, and Hera blinked, standing on her tiptoes to peer over Kanan’s shoulder. “And I’m more than ready to say goodbye to this planet. Where’s my room?” he asked, holding up his duffel bag and what appeared to be some sort of large weapon.

“Um. It’s. It’s right this way,” Hera blinked. “I’ll--I’ll show you.”

Kanan grinned as she led him off, making his own way to the kitchen, slathering jelly on a bread sandwich with an extra slice of bread (clearly he needed to be on the next supply run; Hera could not be trusted with this kind of thing) and sitting down at the table.

Hera appeared in the doorway a minute later, sitting across from him.

“It wasn’t enough to lose my wits,” he said by means of explanation before she could even open her mouth. “Just enough to build camaraderie, I swear.”

“I wasn’t going to ask that,” she said, crossing her arms and leaning back in her chair, peering at him. “I was going to ask how you knew to even go talk to him. You weren’t...intercepting my transmissions, were you?”

She looked hurt, and he winced.

“No, Hera. No. I’d never do that,” he put his sandwich down, leaning forward. “I...know this is going to sound insane, but I swear I’m telling the truth. I...felt it in the Force.”

Something inside of him twisted at the thought that she even had to consider that he’d go behind her back like that. He trusted her--wholly, entirely--and even if she didn’t share some of his other feelings, the least he wanted was for her to have that same level of trust with him.

“Felt what?”

“A pull to the cantina,” he said, unsure of how to explain it. “I...hadn’t felt anything like that in years, so I followed it. And it led me to him--Zeb.”

“He’s the last Lasat. A member of the honor guard, before the Empire destroyed his people,” Hera bit her lip. “How’d you get him to join you when he wouldn’t join me?”

“I...could sympathize,” Kanan said. She looked up at him, and he swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. “I...also know what it’s like for the Empire to destroy all your people, you know?”

“So he knows,” Hera replied, but she didn’t look mad--that much was a relief.

“I...felt like I needed to tell him.”

“Well, it worked, so you clearly did,” she smiled, standing up and putting her hand on his shoulder. “You did good today, Kanan, even if it wasn’t part of the original plan.”

“I live to serve,” he smiled lopsidedly up at her.

“Yeah, sure,” she rolled her eyes, heading for the door and pausing in the doorway. “I’m proud of you, Kanan.”

That, as always, made it all worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me over on the tumblr at words-from-auraelys if you'd like. If not, that's cool too. Thanks for reading--you all make things suck less. ♡


	5. A Welcome Arrow Through the Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kanan and Hera cause a little mayhem.

Kanan had initially worried that Zeb’s presence would change things in some intangible way--that somehow, Hera would have less time for him, or something that he knew was equally ridiculous but still couldn’t quite bring himself to get past.

He had been pleasantly surprised when he realized how wrong that prediction had been. Zeb fit into the ship’s little crew perfectly and had really been opening up during the last few months. He was hilarious, and had the same affinity for deadpan sarcasm as Kanan.

Additionally, he didn’t take any of Chopper’s nonsense, which Kanan could definitely appreciate. Nonetheless, Kanan knew what his relationship with Chopper had to be. He’d once put up with a pet Loth cat far more temperamental just to try and win the affections of a girl who he found far less interesting than Hera. If he could survive Fluffy, he could survive Chopper.

Hera, though, had been insanely busy the last few weeks. They’d hopped from planet to planet fast enough that Kanan had lost track of where they even were. (All backwater planets looked the same to him until he had the chance to go exploring, but they hadn’t even stayed anywhere long enough to explore lately.) This moon (Kateri-Prime? Kamini-Prime?) they’d stopped on looked the same as the last five places they’d stopped, running cargo from point to point so quickly that even Kanan had barely been able to keep up with their shipping manifests, which were strangely cryptic documents that now only kept track of number and size of boxes with strict details not to open them.

He had to admire Hera’s tenacity, but he just hoped she wasn’t getting in over her head.

He and Zeb were in charge of moving the crates today while she went into the town (which was surprisingly populated considering the kinds of places they’d frequented as of late) to do...whatever it was she did while they were here. Chopper was still working on fixing a connector in the Phantom that kept missing if they flew it too quickly.

Their contacts on this world had been droids--even weirder--but the payment had been transferred in the amount that Hera had told them to expect (enough that Kanan couldn’t help but wonder just what was in these boxes) and now all that remained was loading them on the repulsorlifts the droids had brought to carry the goods.

And then he felt it.

He had hoped beyond hope that this strange _reconnecting_ he was having with the Force would back off, calm down, maybe end forever. Sure, it had been useful in tracking down Zeb. And there was no denying it was handy to have in a pinch and had saved his life on more than a few occasions, but he’d wanted this to be over. Once he’d cast off his robes and name, undid his padawan braid and connection to the Force, he’d thought this would all be over.

It had seemed that the two main aspects of his life that he had left behind on Gorse--alcohol and a total lack of commitment--were also what had kept him free from feeling the Force.

It was just a little tug, something he felt somewhere above his stomach but below his heart, like a little youngling trying to get his attention at the temple by gently tugging at his cloak. 

Ignoring it didn’t seem to be an option. If the Force was anything like a little kid, it wasn’t going to give up. So Kanan set his box down on the repulsorlift, closed his eyes for a fraction of a moment, and simply _opened_.

He breathed in. A moment--his soul, infinite. The universe before him, within him, _oh, how he had missed this, if only Master Billaba were here now_ , and even with the distance between them, there she was, bright as a star, Hera Syndulla--

In trouble.

The small tug turned into a nauseous pain, and Kanan gulped down air, opening his eyes and looking frantically around.

“You okay, kid?” Zeb blinked, waving a furry hand in front of his face. Kanan looked up at him, shaking his head fast enough that the stars spun in front of his eyes-- _get it together, Jarrus_.

“I’ve gotta find Hera,” he said. He’d expected a wisecrack of some variety from Zeb, but apparently the warrior knew panic when he saw it, and he put a hand on Kanan’s shoulder, pushing him off to the city.

He didn’t need to be told twice.

Kanan ran, ran like he’d once run laps around the Jedi temple for physical training, ran like he’d once ran when charging down a battle droid that was about to fire at his already-engaged-in-battle master, ran like he’d once ran to prove to Sammo once and for all who was faster of the two of them.

She was like a beacon, a light he couldn’t ignore, and he was drawn to it--he was always drawn to her--but now, it mattered more than ever, and he knew nothing about the town or where she was but he rounded a corner and crashed into her.

“Hera,” he breathed, staring over her shoulder, trying to figure out what danger it was he felt, or why the Force had called him, but there were no stormtroopers, no AT-ATs, no TIEs, nothing Imperial in sight. 

For a split second, he thought he’d imagined it, and that he’d just trampled down Hera for no reason, but in an instant, her shaking hands were clenched in his t-shirt, her face buried in his chest, and he realized that she was shaking.

The immediate sense of panic and danger the Force had brought him had left entirely, and he took one last confused look around--nothing but normal-looking people milling about the streets--before turning his attention to Hera, automatically wrapping his arms around her.

“You’re safe,” he said, unsure of what was happening but certain of her panic, which he felt through the Force so strongly he wasn’t sure how much of it was hers and how much of it was the residual panic he still carried from his darkest days. “I’ve got you. You’re okay.”

Hera still hadn’t removed her face from his shirt, and Kanan wasn’t sure what the proper technique for comforting a Twi’lek was. She didn’t have hair for him to run his hands over--was touching her lekku the same? No, probably not. He settled instead for squeezing her tighter with one arm--pressure always helped when he was panicking--and rubbing small circles on her back with his other hand, resting his chin on her head, still looking around.

She flinched in his arms at the laughter of a group of men who walked by, and he tightened his arms protectively around her.

“Coulda done better, missy,” one of them snorted, and a surge of red-hot anger rose up within him in a way that he hadn’t really felt before, especially given that he had been trained from youth to ignore such feelings.

“Do you need me to kill them? I can pretend I thought they had stormtrooper armor on,” he said quietly, and she snorted, shaking her head.

It hit him in a panicked moment that her head was entirely too close to his heart and she could probably hear it’s rampant staccato racing. Maybe she would just assume it was from running.

He watched the group until they were gone, then waited a few more minutes. He told himself it was entirely for Hera’s benefit, to make sure they were gone.

It mostly was.

She fit perfectly in his arms, under his chin, and he never realized how much he had _wanted_ this before.

“They’re gone,” he said, and Hera nodded, pulling away from him to look up into his eyes. “What was that all about?”

“I’m sure you can imagine,” she said dryly, and he smiled encouragingly--not at _what_ she was saying, but just at the clear return of her fire.

“Yeah, but normally you’re the one holding _me_ back,” Kanan pointed out, and she glanced down. Hera was more than capable of holding her own against anyone who looked sideways at her, and Kanan knew that--didn’t exactly stop his feathers from getting ruffled about it, but he at least knew it--but this time...something had been different.

“It’s so stupid,” she sighed, rolling her eyes--there was the Hera he was used to, though standing far closer than she normally did, not that he was complaining. “They...they’re part of a slaver group. I’d seen them on Ryloth when I was a kid. My dad actually had killed quite a few of them,” she arched an eyebrow. “Not that I blame him. I was too busy being relieved that he managed to get Alta and I back before they made it off planet with us.”

“Hera,” Kanan breathed, forcing down his own rage and anger.

“Actually, we were really just lucky that there were Jedi on Ryloth at the time. They were recovering in town and helped Dad out before going to fight the Separatists. I was totally enamored with one of them,” she said, wrinkling her nose as she smiled. “I’ve always had a fondness for knights, I guess.”

It took every ounce of self-control that Kanan had not to make a comment that he’d regret later, so he just nodded. Oh, how she had changed him.

“Anyway, it’s not like--they weren’t the same guys, but it was that same emblem, that same group, you know? And I’ve spent my entire life planning how I was going to get my revenge on them, how I was going to ruin their lives, but when I saw them--I was ten again, you know? I heard them talking about me...and I panicked. Took off walking as fast as I could, but they were following me, and all I could think was how my dad and some Jedi wouldn’t appear out of nowhere to save me--” she paused, looking up at him, her eyes saying the words that were too dangerous to speak out loud, but he heard them, loud and clear. A Jedi had turned up to save her. 

Well, at least something that had once been a Jedi, regardless of whatever he was now.

“You know what I think?” Kanan said, smiling conspiratorially.

“I usually don’t _want_ to know,” Hera frowned, stepping back and crossing her arms.

“I think it’s time for a little mayhem,” Kanan grinned.

“Kanan, you don’t have to--”

“Hey, I wouldn’t be a knight with a shining--” he tripped over a replacement word awkwardly, as one didn’t simply utter the word _lightsaber_ out loud these days, “--hydrospanner if I didn’t go off on some glorious crusade, right?”

“Kanan, no.”

But oh, how his mind said _Kanan, yes._

He lifted his comlink to his mouth, pressing the button.

“Specter-Three, Specter-Four, come in, please,” Kanan said, barely able to keep a smile off his face at the plans running through his mind.

Chopper beeped something profane, but as usual, Kanan ignored it.

“Specter-One, this is Specter-Four. Specter-Two all right?”

“Yeah. Close scrape--not with our typical friends--but we’re good. We need to cause some...mayhem.”

“Mayhem,” Zeb repeated back, but Kanan could hear the smile in his voice.

“Specter-Three, this is Specter-Two--”

“Mayhem,” Kanan confirmed, talking over Hera, who cut him an irritated look. “There’s a group of slavers parked in the spaceport with us. Well, presumably, at least, since there’s only one spaceport in this town.”

“You know, I’m not a fan of slavers, Specter-One.”

“Me either, Specter-Four!” Kanan waggled his eyebrows at Hera. “If we could just figure out which one it was, maybe we could cause some mayhem on our way out.”

“Maybe I could scope it out, if we knew what we were looking for. You know how much Specter-Three and I love mayhem.”

Chopper’s agreement was laced with language that, as usual, would have made the entire Jedi council (other than maybe Master Obi-Wan Kenobi or Master Kit Fisto--Kanan had always thought those two weren’t as angelic as they looked) cringe.

“It would maybe be a triangular pattern with a horizontal line through it,” Hera sighed, but Kanan noticed the smile playing at the edge of her lips. “Not that anyone would have to do that on account of me.”

“You don’t have to go with us, if you don’t want to,” Kanan said, pocketing his comlink and looking at Hera seriously. “I mean, I know you’ve got reservations--”

“--and my knight,” she lifted an eyebrow. “Right?”

He nodded quickly, his mouth suddenly too dry to speak even if he would have remembered what words were.

“Let’s do this, then,” she grinned, grabbing his hand in hers and running towards the spaceport.

It was like his blood had turned to fire, his face burning read, electric shocks firing underneath of his skin and through his tired soul and suddenly, for the first time in possibly his entire life, Kanan Jarrus felt _young_.

He ran behind Hera, their hands linked tightly and maybe it was both of them squeezing, and for the first time since Order 66, his heart felt like it wasn’t drowning beneath the weight of all he’d lost.

They skidded to a halt at the spaceport, Hera stopping unexpectedly and Kanan running into her, then frantically reaching out to catch her before she fell. She whirled around to face him--she was so close, _so close_ , his heart was racing--and then she started laughing, and he did too. Zeb and Chopper waved them over to the _Ghost_ and they walked over.

If either Zeb or Chopper noticed their conjoined hands, they didn’t say anything about it.

“The ship you’re looking for is right over there,” Zeb said quietly, jerking a head to his right, and ahead, Kanan saw it. Hera stilled next to him, and he squeezed her hand reassuringly. “I figured it would be best for Kanan, Chop and I to go sabotage--”

“No,” Hera shook her head. “I want to be there to do it.”

“Fair enough,” Zeb grinned, plopping a hand on her shoulder. “Kanan and I will start the--”

“Kanan goes with me,” Hera said, and Kanan could feel his own heart erratically skipping beats in response.

“Fine,” Zeb rolled his eyes. “You three will go deal with the ship, and I’ll get the launch sequence started and sit on a gun in case something stupid happens. That work for ya?”

“That works,” Hera grinned, and Zeb gave a messy salute, heading up the boarding ramp. Chopper was whistling in glee at the thought of sabotaging something-- _no surprises there_ , Kanan thought--and together, the three of them headed for the empty ship.

“Look at us, taking the kid out for his little game,” Kanan said, nudging her with his shoulder and smiling.

Hera looked up at him, something mischievous sparkling in her green eyes, and instead of protesting like she usually did when he made some comment about the two of them, she just kept walking.

Was that progress? Kanan hoped that was progress.

They got quieter as they grew closer to the ship, standing behind some empty crates. 

“Chop,” Hera said, kneeling down in front of her droid. “It’s an old JumpMaster model--you know where the panel is. We need that thing disabled--”

“It’s okay for it to explode,” Kanan said, and Hera looked over, something in her eyes that he couldn’t quite read. It sounded harsh, he knew, but Commander Caleb Dume still lived somewhere in the depths of Kanan’s soul, and wars were only won by making decisions that no one wanted to be responsible for making.

He’d made plenty in his life, and this wasn’t one he was even afraid to make.

“They’re a group of slavers,” he said, and though he was looking at Chopper, he knew he was really justifying himself to Hera. “They’ve made their decision. They’re not going to stop. And if it has to come to their lives of someone innocent losing their freedom, I sure know what choice I want made.”

Chopper beeped something back at Kanan that roughly translated to I know that, you stupid meatbag, and he took off rolling for the ship.

Next to him, Hera leaned her head against his shoulder, watching her droid work.

Chopper rolled back a few minutes later, whistling Ryloth’s planetary anthem, and Kanan felt a surge of affection for the little droid that lasted for exactly three seconds, when Chopper rolled over his foot, gave a beep that sounded like a snide little laugh, and took off for the ship.

_He’s still better than Fluffy the Loth cat,_ Kanan thought, but it felt more like he was trying to convince himself.

“Come on,” Hera smiled, linking her arm through his as they headed back for the _Ghost_.

Hera headed for the cockpit, which blessedly faced the ship she was watching. Kanan headed for the kitchen and got them both a cup of caf.

“We heading off?” Zeb asked, hopping down from the side guns.

“I think she’ll likely hang around first,” Kanan said, holding up the mugs of caf as means of explanation.

Zeb paused, then smiled. It was surprisingly kind, and it reminded him so much of Master Billaba that he waited for his typical rush of panic to come--but it didn’t, for once.

“You’re good to her, kid. I like that,” Zeb said, and without waiting for a response, he turned and headed for his room, placing one hand on top of Chopper’s dome and forcing him away from the cockpit.

Kanan headed for the cockpit, the familiar _whsssk_ of the door closing behind him as he headed for the co-pilot’s seat, handing Hera her favorite mug.

“They’ll be leaving soon,” she said, taking the mug from Kanan and breathing the scent of the caf in before drinking it like she always did. “They...had mentioned that earlier. How easy it would be to do a ‘grab and go’, as they called it.”

Kanan took a sip of his caf to keep give him a second to think, enjoying the warmth of it.

“I wouldn’t have let them. I would have charged in any place to get you back.”

“I know,” she said, and he looked over, a little surprised. “It...was the only thing that kept me calm. It’s been just me and Chop for so long, but with you and Zeb here…”

He didn’t respond to that, finishing his drink in a few gulps instead, trying to ignore the small feeling of defeat that was slowly clenching around his heart. 

“But really, it was you that I thought of the most,” she said, and now she wasn’t looking at him, staring out the window at the ship in front of her as she finished her mug of caf and set it at her feet as well. “Somehow, even as I was panicking, I just...I knew you were coming. It was like I could feel it.”

He winced at the thought that he had been projecting his own feelings in the Force strongly enough that even someone who wasn’t sensitive to the Force could feel it. 

“I felt safe,” she said, looking over at him, and it wasn’t like he’d ever _stopped_ looking at her, and that same electricity was firing under his skin, his heart racing faster than it ever had--

A few ships down, the cockpit of the slaver ship exploded and both of them jumped to their feet at the noise before realizing that for once, this explosion was _exactly_ what they had wanted.

Kanan could hear Chopper and Zeb cheering all the way down the hallway. He looked at the smoking ship--an entirely internal explosion, no other ships had been damaged, _he_ really _needed to stay on Chopper’s good side_ \--and over to Hera, smiling at how pleased she looked, her childhood revenge exacted, but more importantly, the fact that no slaves would be taken on that ship, and even now there were a few beings racing out of the back of it whooping, and Hera and Kanan were both cheering with them from the cockpit. She looked at him, her green eyes sparkling, and he couldn’t stop the wide grin on his face--they had did it, they had did it _together_ , she was smiling, she was smiling _at him_ \--

And suddenly she had turned to him, her hands clenching his t-shirt for balance as she stood on her tiptoes and _what was she doing_ and then her lips were on his, and all his thoughts were reduced to a single _oh_ as the light traces of electricity that had been in his veins erupted into a full storm, surging through him as he wrapped his arms around her and she did the same, her hands in his hair in spite of his ponytail, _he had_ not _been expecting how good that would feel_ , and he wasn’t sure how much time had passed, maybe it was half a second or maybe it had been an entire hyperspace journey, and it was once the sirens started in the spaceport that she finally broke away from him, sitting back down in the pilot’s seat as if nothing had happened and finalizing the sequence that Zeb had started, lifting them off and ignoring the ship’s coms which were likely telling them to stop.

Of course, they weren’t the only ship lifting off, either. When things unexpectedly exploded in shady spaceports, lots of beings no longer worried about following exact protocol.

“Might want to sit down, Kanan,” Hera said, a little smirk playing at her lips as Kanan sat down in a daze, wondering if the grin on his face would be stuck there permanently as he couldn’t seem to stop. “In case I have to do any evasive maneuvers.”

On a better day, he might have had a comeback, but as of this moment, he couldn’t remember how to make his words do the word thing, so he just sat down and strapped in.

She pulled out of the spaceport and left atmosphere as smoothly as always and pressed the button to jump to hyperspace, finally turning to look over at him as they both unbuckled their safety harnesses.

“If, ah--” she paused, suddenly looking nervous. “If that was too forward, and that wasn’t welcome, then I--”

“No, no, that was definitely welcome,” Kanan grinned, still a little dazed. “Unless you didn’t mean to, and then--”

“Oh, no, that was definitely intentional,” Hera smiled sheepishly, and Kanan found that he liked that smile just as much as he loved all her others. “I...you know that my missions from Fulcrum always come first, right?” She looked suddenly nervous, but very determined. “I mean, I--”

“I know,” Kanan said, turning his seat to face her as she did the same. They were close enough that their knees were touching, and Kanan placed his hands on hers, looking her in the eyes as seriously as he could. “I know, and I understand. I’m fine with that.”

“You sure?”

He felt the same calmness in the Force that he had felt the day he’d found his lightsaber crystal--that same sense that finally there was something (and now, someone) in the galaxy who was perfectly fine with him exactly how he was.

“Never been more sure about something in my life,” he grinned, pressing his forehead to hers, content and at peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took me a bit to make this happen. Winter break ended this week and I'd forgotten how constantly tired I am when school is in session. ^_^;


	6. Our Rain-Washed Histories

“Kanan,” Zeb said, waving his hand in front of the former Jedi’s face, and Kanan finally snapped back to reality. “Anyone in there?”

“Yeah, sorry,” he shook his head, tugging on his ponytail as if that would wake him up. “What are we talking about again?”

“Seriously?” Hera arched an eyebrow, clearly not impressed, and Chopper beeped out some profanity about Kanan’s intelligence (or lack thereof) that would have been horrific for a youngling. Fortunately, Hera was the youngest present, and she seemed immune to Chopper’s colorful use of language. “Where’s your brain, Kanan?”

Kanan Jarrus had no intention of answering that question with Chopper and Zeb present, especially as the answer involved her and a stolen moment a few days ago in the cargo bay, so he just tapped his forehead as Hera sighed in exasperation.

“I’ll go over it one more time for you,” she said. Even when she was frustrated, he still could have listened to her voice forever. Of course, he wouldn’t last forever if she choked him for not paying attention, so this time he made an effort to actually listen to _what_ she was saying instead of just appreciating her voice. Her blinding presence in the Force. Her eyes, the green of her skin, _her_ \--Focus, Jarrus, he reminded himself. “This shouldn’t be a bad run, but the Imperial presence on this planet might be tricky. You and Zeb will deliver our packages to the contact, and then we’re getting out of here before anything bad happens, okay?”

“Okay,” Kanan nodded. Sounded easy enough.

“Were you not paying attention when she went through the entire part about having to dodge the Black Sun and any of their agents or angry droids that might be hanging around?” Zeb asked, also arching an eyebrow. Kanan lifted one of his too just so he wouldn’t be left out of the group, and Zeb rolled his eyes.

“I’m used to angry, psychotic murderbots,” Kanan shrugged, and Chopper’s tirade was so loud, long, profane, and high-pitched that Hera had to tap his orange dome with a bit more force than usual to get him to stop.

“We’ll be out of hyperspace in a few minutes, if you all want to get the goods ready,” Hera said, standing up and stretching. Kanan took a few moments to appreciate the view, trying to ignore Chopper ramming into his knees in revenge. 

“You’re not coming with us?” Kanan asked.

Hera threw her hands up and walked out as Zeb snickered.

“You really weren’t listening to her debriefing, were you?”

Kanan smiled sheepishly, and Zeb clapped a furry hand on his shoulder in camaraderie. 

“Ah, young love,” he sighed contentedly, and Kanan felt the blood rushing to his face.

The Jedi didn’t really approve of lying, though, so he didn’t feel the need to counter Zeb’s statement.

Besides, Zeb wouldn’t have heard him over Chopper anyway.

###

Ord Mantell was not really shaping up to be one of Kanan’s favorite planets. 

Their delivery was a little bag of datachips that had some sort of highly classified data that Kanan and Zeb weren’t privy to, but Hera had informed them that it would be better to die than let the data fall into the hands of the Black Sun, or the Empire, and Kanan had no desire to disappoint her--or ruin whatever job they were doing by messing it up.

Of course, it would be too easy if things just went according to plan.

Hera had split the four datachips between the two of them, just in case the worst was to happen to minimize the damage.

Kanan had lost Zeb in a scuffle with a patrol of Black Sun battle droids. They weren’t the same B-1s he’d fought in his youth. They weren’t anything like any of the droids he’d fought in the Clone Wars, as a matter of fact, but he’d realized in an instant that his old hatred of battle droids hadn’t died over the years, and not using a lightsaber to redirect shots made fighting them even more irritating.

The constant draw was there, like an itch that needed scratching--the temptation to reach for the part of his belt that no longer held a lightsaber. The desire to reach into the Force to use powers long abandoned but not forgotten.

Strangely, the itch was even stronger on Lothal, like something about the planet was calling to him in the Force.

He shook his head, firing a few more shots before rounding the corner and climbing up a fire escape ladder to get a better vantage point. Hopefully, Zeb would make the rendezvous point and get back to the _Ghost_. He wasn’t exactly stealthy (not that Kanan necessarily was either, but he blended in much better than the Lasat) and that was making it harder for Kanan to shake the patrol that was bent on stopping him from exploring the streets.

He made it to the top of the building, thankful that Ord Mantell was no Coruscant, and backed up, eyes on the ground.

And that’s when he smacked into the figure.

He whirled around just in time to get blasted with--what in the Force, was that _paint_?

He jumped back, hands up, though it hadn’t quite stopped him from getting doused in lime green paint from a girl with hair so neon blue that it looked like some of the signs he’d seen on Coruscant as a kid. She couldn’t have been more than a kid herself, maybe in her early teens? Padawan aged? Funny, how his brain immediately jumped back to his childhood--

And then, in one smooth motion, she dropped the can of spray paint and out of nowhere, there were two blasters in her hand, and he caught sight of the Mandalorian helmet on the ground by the graffiti--

He was reaching for his blaster, too, a reflex action, but the _artwork_ \--this girl was _good_.

And then he remembered the helmet. The Mandalorian helmet. Like murderbots hadn’t been enough, now he had to find a murderkid raised in a culture of warriors too. 

This was clearly not his day.

“Please don’t shoot me,” he said, holding his hands up at shoulder-level, palms facing her, even as he held his gun. He doubted her reflexes were better than his, but he hoped it wouldn’t come to that. “I’m not--with--whatever you don’t like.”

“That-- _what?_ ” she blinked. “That doesn’t even make sense!”

“Whatever you’re against, I’m not part of it, I swear,” he shrugged, and she lowered her guns. He let his arms drop to his sides as well, but neither of them put their blasters up just yet. Judging by her artwork--stormtroopers looming ominously over the common people--she wasn’t a fan of the Empire. He didn’t see the Black Sun’s logo anywhere in the artwork, though, so that probably meant she wasn’t a part of them. “I’m not Black Sun. Not Imperial. Just...trying to run a job. Avoid the battle droids. The stormtroopers. Everyone.”

“Not Empire,” she repeated, and he nodded. She put her blasters up and picked back up her can of spray paint, turning back to her mural.

Kanan knew he needed to go back to the task at hand, but there it was--that same draw in the Force that hadn’t led him astray since he’d first joined Hera’s crew and started listening to it again. 

And as bad as his day had been so far, he sure as hell wasn’t ignoring it now.

“Your art. I like it,” he said, stepping closer, and she cut her eyes over at him suspiciously. “No, really.”

“What do you want?” she crossed her arms, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. 

“To compliment you on your art,” Kanan blinked, then realized in horror the pieces that clicked together that she had probably put together long before him--young girl, alone, not unattractive other than the fact that she was a _kid_ , crappy planet. “No, really. That’s it. No ulterior motive, I swear,” he held up his hands, stopping himself from saying something like _Jedi’s honor_ or something equally cringeworthy that would get him killed. “I took an art history class as a kid,” he said, and it wasn’t totally untrue. Even if most of his education had been based on using the Force and using a lightsaber, it wasn’t like he hadn’t had basic classes as a youngling. “This is good.”

“You recognize its influences?” she asked hopefully, and Kanan cringed.

“Uh, no. I’m old. It’s been a long time,” he said, and she rolled her eyes. “I never said I was _good_ at art history.”

“Come on. I’ll show you the easiest way to wherever you’re going,” she said, putting a cap back on the can and putting it in a backpack, grabbing her helmet--also brightly colored, just like the armor she’d clearly painted herself and putting it on her head. 

“Thanks,” Kanan blinked. “That’s...suspiciously nice?”

“You’re not Imperial, right?” she shrugged. “Good enough for me.”

He followed her down the fire escape on the other side of the building, sticking close to her as she ducked him through dark connections between alleyways inhabited by rats and beings in enough distress that they weren’t particularly concerned with the two of them. Kanan winced--had he looked this deplorable when he’d stayed drunk most of the time? Granted, he’d never tried spice or anything worse than liquor, but still, the blank, dead stares of the people in the gutters--

“Come on,” the girl reminded him, pulling him back to the present as he followed her through. “You’re looking for Sector K23, right? It should be just around--”

They came around the corner to two stormtroopers.

The girl came to a full stop.

“It’s her!” one of them said, and both of them lunged for her.

Kanan’s initial assessment was right. Her reflexes weren’t as good as his, not yet, and each grabbed an arm and Kanan charged at them, that same Jedi instinct to protect as much a part of his reflexes as his quick movements and--

The girl wasn’t helpless, though, and shook one off and was taking the other in hand-to-hand combat as Kanan launched himself at the second, taking him down and quickly incapacitating him.

The girl looked over at him, mildly impressed, and Kanan knew that look was mirrored in his eyes as well.

“You’ve had some sort of combat training,” she said, her facial expression unreadable behind her helmet. “I thought you took art history in school.”

“At a military academy,” he shrugged. It wasn’t necessarily untrue. “What about you? Is that all Mandalorian training?”

“More or less, though I learned some at school too.”

“Military academy?” Kanan asked, lifting an eyebrow.

“Imperial,” the girl said, her voice deadpan. “Which is why they’re looking for me. Come on. We need to get you to where you’re going before these guys’ friends come looking for us.”

It didn’t take much to put it together--she was being hunted by the Imperials for defecting. He took a deep breath, trying to stem against the panic rising within him--being hunted, by Imperials, by clones in armor so similar to stormtroopers, by people she’d gone to school with, by her friends, by Gray and Stiles, alone, surviving--

“Hey, stranger,” the girl said, waving her hand in front of his face, and he forced another deep breath--in, slow, out, slow. Grounded himself in the moment--he could see her, he could hear the traffic, he could smell the rancid smell of trash from the dumpsters, he could feel the sweat on his hands, he could taste the bitter aftertaste of caf that seemed to linger with him for hours. He was here, Ord Mantell, not there, on Kaller.

“Yeah, sorry,” he said, following her to the dead drop he was to leave the chips at if he was spotted by Imperials at any point, which he was. He glanced around, and she stood behind him, angling herself to block him so he could do what he needed to do.

Convinced that the chips were safe, he lifted his comlink to his mouth.

“Specter-Four,” Kanan murmured.

“Come in, Specter-One,” Zeb’s voice responded.

“Status?”

“Back home. You good?”

“On my way. Specter-Two, might want to prepare for a quick exit, just in case.”

“Gotcha, Specter-One,” Hera replied, and even over a comlink her voice sent a little jolt through his system.

Kanan turned back to the girl, but she was walking away.

“Hey, you, wait,” he said, jogging up to her. She stopped, turning back to him, her face still hidden by the mask. “What’s on this planet for you?”

She laughed--a cold, bitter sound, and that calm confidence that came from the Force rushed through him like warm light after a long, cold night.

“Then come with us,” he said, trusting that sense of the Force. “We’re...a mess, honestly, but we’re doing what we can against the Empire. You could join us.”

“What makes you think I want to join you?” she crossed her arms, shifting her weight from side to side again.

“Because it’s hard to be a warrior and not fight what you hate because you know it’s evil,” he said, the words hitting closer to home than he really cared to admit to himself. “We could use someone with your skills.”

“And what exactly is the payoff for all that?” she asked, taking off her helmet. Her brown eyes looked so much older than she seemed to be.

Hadn’t the Empire done that to all of them?

“A home,” Kanan Jarrus replied, holding out a hand on nothing but hope.

The girl stared at him, then grinned, clasping his hand in hers.

###

“Honey, I’m home, now let’s _go_ ,” Kanan yelled, a little out of breath. The girl and he had practically had to run the entire way back to the _Ghost_. Apparently, those murderbots were better at hunting than he gave them credit for, and the girl had a former friend in the Black Sun who had abandoned her or betrayed her or something--it had been hard to pick up between blaster shots and all the running.

Zeb looked from the girl to him, and he gave a quick nod. Zeb shrugged and ambled off for a seat as Hera took off. Kanan went to the cockpit, the girl behind him, and buckled in next to Hera as the girl and Zeb buckled up in the back two seats.

There was a part of Kanan that was a little too giddy that Hera trusted him enough that she hadn’t even questioned the appearance of a Mandalorian teenager on her ship and instead flew them into hyperspace, punching it back to their Lothal base.

Once they were in hyperspace, Hera turned in her seat, looking from Kanan to the girl as if trying to figure out where to start.

“Hera Syndulla,” she smiled, holding her hand out to the girl. “Captain of the _Ghost_.”

“Sabine Wren,” the girl said, taking off her helmet and shaking Hera’s hand. “Imperial academy defector and failure at being a bounty hunter.”

“And an artist,” Kanan added, pointing at her armor.

“Glad to have you aboard, Sabine. We do some pretty serious anti-Empire work here,” she warned. “You good with that?”

“Oh, I’m good with that,” Sabine smirked.

“Then welcome aboard,” Hera grinned, then turned to Kanan. “Why are you covered in green spray paint?”

“Green’s my favorite color?” he arched an eyebrow, and Hera rolled her eyes. Even so, she didn’t fully stop the smile from playing at her lips, and that was all Kanan needed. 

“Make yourself useful and go start something for dinner,” Hera grinned, pulling up an encrypted channel to contact Fulcrum. “Zeb, can you show Sabine to the room across from yours?”

“Yep,” Zeb nodded, and the three of them filed out of the cockpit. “Dining area’s past all this. Kanan’s cooking isn’t too terrible.”

“Thanks, I think,” Kanan rolled his eyes.

“Here’s Hera’s room,” Zeb said, gesturing haphazardly as he walked down the hallway, Sabine walking quickly to keep up with his long strides. “Kanan’s. Mine. Yours. Hera’s droid’s crazy, so don’t mess with it.”

“Totally crazy,” Kanan confirmed.

Sabine pressed the door that opened to the empty room. It hit Kanan that she hadn’t brought any stuff--then hit him harder that she hadn’t seemed concerned about it, as if the backpack she wore contained every possession she owned.

“Do you think she’ll let me paint it?” Sabine asked.

But Hera’s message to Fulcrum must have been quick, because she was already in the hallway.

“You sure can, Specter-Five,” Hera smiled as she walked past her, smiling at Kanan as she headed for the kitchen.

“Welcome home, kiddo,” Kanan grinned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, uh, sorry it took me a month to update this. It's been a long month. I think I'm functioning again. Hopefully, this isn't too terrible.
> 
> On that note, Sabineeeeeeeeeeeee, I love her. <3


	7. On the Wings of Others

Her crew worked together with an efficiency that was almost more effective than some of the rebel cells her father had coordinated on Ryloth, taking easy to commands and working together in a camaraderie that was almost more like family. All four rooms in the _Ghost_ were inhabited--Zeb and Sabine both had extra bunks in their rooms, but that was okay--and their little team of five was good at everything except dividing up evenly.

Sabine had freshened Chopper’s dome up with a fresh coat of orange paint, and as a result, had immediately become Chopper’s second-favorite organic. (Hera, Chopper assured her, would always be his first-favorite.) In fact, Hera didn’t remember the last time she’d seen the droid so friendly.

He still hadn’t lightened up on Kanan, though, and had a really bad habit of rolling noisily up at times when she would have really, _really_ rather just been alone with Kanan.

Sabine’s artwork had completely transformed her room, but for the most part, she kept her skills limited to here. There was a little sketch of a Loth cat that she had done for Kanan--they’d both been laughing about some cat he knew named Fluffy--and he’d hung it on the refrigerator in a way that reminded her so solidly of her own father in her childhood that it caught her a little off-guard.

They’d divided up their most recent tasks on Lothal--Sabine, Zeb, and Chopper were on a supply run and she had already done all her correspondence with Fulcrum. Kanan had been on ship watching duty, but the kids weren’t back yet and judging by Chopper’s location (linked to her datapad) they were taking their sweet time and still had most of their tasks left to do.

Not that that bothered her at all.

Kanan wasn’t in his room or the kitchen, nor was he lounging on the couch. Hera made both of them a fresh cup of caf before finally going to the cargo bay--the only place left he could be.

“Hey, stranger,” she smiled. He was hunched over the _Ghost_ ’s workbench, his blaster and what looked like a piece of Sabine’s armor in front of him. He didn’t acknowledge her at all, and she frowned--that was unusual for Kanan. She normally couldn’t even walk into a room without eliciting a smile from him, even if he wasn’t looking at her. She wasn’t sentimental enough to admit it out loud, but it was just one of many things she found endearing about him. She walked closer to him--yep, that was his blaster, and one of Sabine’s shoulder-pauldron-whatever-they-were-called-things. “What’cha doing?”

“She’s had some carbon scoring on this for ages, and I told her I’d scrub it down for her today when I cleaned up my blaster,” Kanan murmured, staring down at the piece in his hands. “She’s so meticulous about things and I knew it was driving her nuts, but we’ve just been running from planet to planet, you know? I thought--”

She smiled even as he trailed off, bumping her shoulder up against his, but even that didn’t get a grin out of him. She bit the inside of her cheek, trying to figure out what was going on with him.

“It was nice of you,” she said, and he looked at her, baffled, as if she were speaking a language he didn’t understand. “To do that for her. You’re right. We’ve been pretty busy.”

“Yeah,” he repeated, staring back down at the piece. Like most of Sabine’s stuff, it was painted in her signature style, an orange symbol she’d noticed in her room before when she’d bring by snacks for the girl. 

“What’s wrong?” she asked, realizing that Kanan wasn’t about to offer anything up himself.

He held out the shoulderpiece, and Hera inspected it, but like all Mandalorian armor, even a little carbon scoring would buff out and couldn’t do any real lasting damage. 

“That,” he said, pointing at her design.

“What about it?” 

But it wasn’t Hera who managed to ask first--Sabine was back, albeit without Chopper and Zeb, and Hera and Kanan both jumped as if she’d walked in on something far more intimate than the two of them inspecting her armor.

“You’re back early,” Hera said after noticing Kanan’s hesitation. Sometimes, she could sense his emotions rolling off of him as if the two of them were linked--but it was when she couldn’t feel _anything_ that she knew something was wrong, that he was deliberately locking down. 

“Zeb couldn’t read his handwriting on the tool you needed a replacement for--”

“Hydrospanner,” Hera and Kanan said in unison, though Kanan’s voice was much quieter than hers. She couldn’t suppress the immediate smile, and Sabine rolled her eyes, though she was smiling too.

“I told him! I told him that was what it said, but he was convinced it was something involving a hyperdrive, and I _told_ him, ‘Zeb, they wouldn’t send us for--’” she paused, reaching out and taking the armor piece from Kanan’s twitching hands and popping it back onto her suit. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Kanan said, but it was too quick, too forced. Sabine glanced to Hera, tilting her head a little to the side as if waiting for a cue. Hera gave the quickest shrug of her shoulders--she didn’t know anymore than Sabine did what Kanan’s issue was today.

She had been with Kanan long enough to recognize that tell, though--breathing that either was too fast or entirely too slow, hands that quivered only slightly and only if you looked carefully, and that awful, hollow feeling that he gave off (though she wasn’t sure Sabine was in tune with that) were all clues. 

“No, really,” Sabine blinked, obviously knowing he was lying. “You fixed it fine. You really can’t break Mandalorian armor, Kanan, I mean it’s practically--”

“--why do you have that painted on your pauldron?” Kanan finally asked, the words tripping out with none of their normal elegant grace, and he stared at some fixed point near the ceiling above both Sabine and Hera’s heads as if the other person in his conversation was up there.

Sabine looked back to Hera, who gave the tiniest shake of her head. _No idea._

“It’s my signature symbol,” she said carefully, turning so that they could see it more clearly. “I paint it on everything.”

“I’d just...never looked it at that close before,” Kanan said, still not looking at them. “Why? Why…that particular symbol?”

“It’s a starbird,” she said, and Kanan finally looked back down at her. Hera was still watching him, listening to his silence--his hands, still trembling at his sides, his breathing, still too even to be natural. “Like the legend.”

“What’s that legend?” Hera asked, taking a step closer to Kanan, just close enough for their shoulders to brush, just enough to lend him her presence-- _I’m here, Kanan, you’re here_.

“You know. The starbird...when you think it’s dead, it’s not. When it’s burning down and dying, it’s actually just being reborn in the center of a nova,” Sabine stared down at her hands, even though the symbol wasn’t on her gloves. “I...it makes me think of what we’re doing, you know? The Empire thinks hope is dead, and sometimes it looks that way--but it’s just because it’s being reborn, you know? Forged in fire.”

“Starbird?” Kanan blinked, looking like was waking up from a trance. He reached towards Sabine, and she popped the pauldron back off, handing it to him. He looked at it closer, looking notably relieved. “So--”

“The head always looks right,” she said, pointing at the symbol up the middle. “And those are the wings.”

“This based off of Janyor too?” Kanan nodded appreciatively, and Sabine made a happy little sound before immediately regaining her composure.

“You looked it up,” she said casually, but Hera couldn’t help but grin at her barely-contained excitement.

“You told me to,” he shrugged, as if it wasn’t a big deal, as if he didn’t know what a big deal it was to her when he obviously did and by the stars, she was so thankful the Force had brought them together whether she knew how to use it or not. “It’s cool, Sabine. I like it.”

“Oh, and I got this for you,” she grinned, slapping a power cell into his hands. “Upgrade that blaster so you can keep up with me, old man.”

“I could shoot circles around you,” Kanan rolled his eyes. “Thanks.”

“I’ll be back later. With a hydrospanner,” Sabine said, accentuating every syllable before rolling her eyes and scuttling off.

Hera watched her as she left, then turned back to Kanan, who was tracing the symbol in the dusty mess of the workbench.

“What was that all about?” she finally asked.

Kanan hesitated, then drew another symbol in the dust. At first, Hera thought it was just the starbird again, but there were some subtle differences--a starburst where the neck would be, the bird’s head just a point instead.

“At a glance--I thought--without context--” he stopped, taking a breath. “I thought that’s what she was drawing,” he said, indicating his sketch.

Hera waited, but he was looking at her with such hope, such expectation, and she didn’t know what he _wanted_ , what she was clearly supposed to be seeing. She looked back to the symbol, thinking--

“The Jedi symbol,” she whispered, and he nodded. She remembered it not because she had ever seen a Jedi wear it--no, they were strange, esoteric warriors who fought in robes instead of armor, but she remembered seeing it on one of the fighters they’d flown in on, a master and padawan who had once been on Ryloth that she had seen up close, who had once swooped in and saved her. “They do somewhat look alike.”

He nodded, tracing Sabine’s starbird next to his own rendition of the Jedi symbol, staring at them side by side.

“I was just...worried, you know? And seeing it there--it was just--”

“A reminder,” Hera finished gently for him when it was clear his words were gone, and he nodded, closing his eyes. She wrapped an arm around his waist, laying her head on his shoulder, and he rested his head against hers, snaking his arm around her shoulders and pulling her closer. “You know, maybe she’s right. Maybe it’s like the starbird.”

“What, the Jedi?”

“Maybe someday they’ll be reborn too,” she said, suddenly wishing she hadn’t even attempted this conversation--that he would take it the way she saw it in her mind instead of how trite it sounded. “You know?”

“Mmm,” he said, which wasn’t hardly a response but wasn’t as bad as she’d expected. “I...who knows. Maybe.”

He didn’t sound quite like he believed it, but it was a start. She saw how he interacted with Sabine--such an easy camaraderie, like an older brother or maybe an uncle or even a father--and Hera wondered what that relationship would look like, if Sabine were able to use the Force like a Jedi. Would Kanan train her then? Could the Jedi ever really be reborn?

It was like Sabine said, though. Maybe when hope seemed like it was gone it was just being reborn in the nova of a star.

“Caf’s getting cold,” Hera finally said, handing him his mug, and he smiled, tapping his forehead to hers before reaching over and wiping his hands through the dust, the Jedi symbol smearing into the starbird until they were nothing but the same clean, empty surface.

A blank slate. A fresh start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So....sorry it took me so long to update this. It's been a really long few months, but I think I'm finally waking up. :) If you're still here, thanks. <3 It means more to me than I'll ever be able to express.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written a fanfic in, like, fourteen years. Do we still have to do the obvious disclaimer of I'm not Disney and I don't own Star Wars?
> 
> I'm not Disney and I don't own Star Wars. ;)


End file.
